The two-part U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Wal-Mart gender discrimination suit this week produced two results -- one sensible and one problematic.

Justices rightly reigned in excessive class actions that try to lump too many people together with a hard-to-prove common injury. Concurrently, the court struck a blow to legitimate group cases of discrimination or unfair treatment.

The high court dismissed a gender discrimination lawsuit brought on behalf of 1.5 million women who have worked at America's largest retailer since 1998.

Plaintiffs sought three remedies: to end company practices that allegedly discriminate against women, to have the company adopt equitable policies and to recover wages lost due to gender bias.

In the first part of the ruling, justices agreed 9-0 that the suit failed to meet certain class-action criteria. Federal rules require members of the class to share "questions of law or fact," which was difficult to prove for such a large group.

As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, the Wal-Mart employees "held a multitude of different jobs, at different levels of Wal-Mart's hierarchy, for variable lengths of time, in 3,400 stores, sprinkled across 50 states, with a kaleidoscope of supervisors (male and female) ... the mere claim by employees of the same company that they have suffered an injury gives no cause to believe that all their claims can be productively litigated at once ..."

But in a second 5-4 decision, the court established a much higher bar to become part of a class action. The majority concluded that "dissimilarities" among individuals can undercut a potential class action even if the parties share common complaints.

That unfairly all but ends some remedies under one part of the main class-action rule -- even though Congress and most courts of appeals have allowed it for decades.

As dissenter Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, "The evidence ... including class members' tales of their own experiences, suggests that gender bias suffused Wal-Mart's company culture. ... Individual differences should not bar a ... class."

She wisely would have sent the case back to the trial court to consider whether the class action should have gone forward in a different form.

Earlier this year, another 5-4 high court decision dealt another blow to group lawsuits. In AT&T vs. Concepcion, a class action was filed on behalf of cell phone customers who were told they'd receive free phones, but had to pay extras fees and taxes for them.

Justices upheld cell phone agreements requiring customers to waive the right to take part in a class action and instead go to arbitration. Then the court gave companies even more power when it ruled out class-based arbitration.

Together the recent Supreme Court cases limit -- and in some situations eliminate -- class-action litigation. Without that option, many individuals could not afford to bring individual suits -- and lawyers would be less inclined to take them for smaller amounts in damages.

It's constructive that the Wal-Mart decision can help cut down on some overreaching, frivolous litigation. Yet legitimate patterns of discrimination and unfair treatment continue to occur; legal action will now be more difficult to pursue.

Workers, consumers or others who have been wronged still deserve the opportunity to band together and have their day in court.

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